Meta

Monthly Archives: December 2012

Before I say anything else, let me say this: Don’t run away. I’m not going to be preachy and I’m going to try not to argue. I’m here to teach you about guns. You can do whatever you want with the information I give you.

The Sandy Hook shooting has brought the issue of Gun Control back to the table. Now I’ll be honest. I grew up with guns. I shoot guns. I’m comfortable with guns and I’m very interested in them. There is an AK-47 in my home — not because of any crazed paranoia or ideas of self defense, but for hobbyist purposes. That said, I’m rather neutral on gun control. When people say “Effective gun control”, they never say what that would be — seemingly because no one knows. There is a huge problem though. People suggesting solutions know absolutely nothing about guns. There are many places that talk about this, but they tend to go around conservative circles, where people already agree with them. Being one of the random “Pro Gun Liberals” out there, I’m going to try to educate the few of you who read this blog a bit.

As a note, I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU DO WITH THIS INFORMATION. If you use it to decide ‘all guns should be banned’ or something, that’s fine with me. I will disagree with you, but I want our disagreement to be based on fact. I’d rather a law get passed that I disagree but that might be effective than a law pass that is merely inconvenient and symbolic. I’m not against gun control: I’m against BAD gun control laws. So I’ll try and keep this close to factual as I can.

Assault Weapons are a big buzzword right now. Because who would need a weapon that exists purely for ASSAULTING people? People almost always go “Well, I’m sure no one sane would disagree with an ASSAULT WEAPON BAN!” but they don’t even know what an assault weapon actually is.

Lets start with a little rifle history. The oldest ‘modern’ type of rifle we still see is the ‘bolt action’ rifle (lets use the Mosin Nagant as a visual example. These are the type of rifles most people are familiar with. They fire slowly — one bullet at a time, each shot requiring you to manually operate the bolt. Most people would associate these with hunting rifles, but they were the class of rifles used in WW1 and most of 2, while also still being used for many sniper rifles. These fire rifle cartridges, the biggest sized bullet most people ever deal with. The exact caliber varies, but that’s not important.

Then for comparison sake, you have a sub-machinegun or ‘machine pistol’. These small guns, like the MP5 fire fully automatic — they fire as long as you hold the trigger down (unlike one pull per bullet, like a Semi-automatic rifle), but due to their size and recoil, they fire pistol ammunition which is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller than rifle cartridges.

So now we get to Assault rifles. At this point you might guess that an Assault Rifle is a fancy looking rifle that fires automatically, but that’s not quite true. They don’t fire full rifle rounds. They fire so called ‘intermediate’ rounds, like the 5.56×45 mm NATO, shown here to scale with other rounds. So why would a weapon designed to kill use a SMALLER round? Simply put, the recoil. To sustain controllable automatic fire, rounds with less kick were needed. Assault rifles are DESIGNED around the power of automatic and burst fire (sometimes JUST burst fire in some modern military weapons). Removing that functionality and retaining all the compromises made to make that functionality manageable leads to a weapon that is actually less useful than a lot of other civilian weapons.

You see, lethality is NOT the most important aspect of an assault rifle. Ease of operation, accuracy, reliability and many other factors take priority. For example, longer barrels can make a round more powerful (due to increased acceleration time) but the burden of a longer barrel is not worth the tradeoff and military rifles have over time strived to reduce their length as much as possible.

Now, no one should still be allowed buy automatic weapons, right? And you can’t. Fully automatic weapons have been banned for a long time and account for absurdly few crimes. Generally they are only permitted to individuals with very special licenses. This means, in effect, that every scary looking assault weapon in civilian hands, is a semi-automatic rifle (like the garand) that fires a WEAKER cartridge. The only difference is that the Assault Rifles tend to have mounting rails and other visual flairs, atop larger magazine capacities (which we will get too later). So what did that Federal Assault Weapon ban actually get rid of? Let’s quote some law.

Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally).

Flash Suppressors and grenades are tightly controlled not available even IF the weapon can receive them. A bayonet mount is not a practical concern. Pistol grips are a matter of preference for comforts sake. The law banned them because they were afraid of criminals wielding guns akimbo, which would.. be very silly and impractical. The folding stock could be argued to make sneaking a weapon easier, but there is the kicker. You can get away with ONE of these things. Guns with folding stocks were not banned, only if they were paired with another superficial features. In practice, this law merely banned historic weapons and cool looking guns, much in the way one might hilariously ban cars with spoilers to reduce speeding. The law had another provision, and perhaps the most defensible one: A 10 round per magazine limit. Perhaps even too high for its purpose, but the only thing on that list that has maybe EVER saved a life. This law pissed off gun owners because it achieved so little in terms of saving lives, while preventing people from collecting neat guns. People don’t want an AK-47 because it’s the best thing to hunt, kill or defend your self with, they want it because it’s interesting. Many guns that would not be categorized as assault weapons. have arguably better killing power. People get scared about weapons like an AR-15, while something like the Garand is actually far deadlier — it’s simply much more unassuming. These are not inherently the best weapons for mass murder. Remember, military weapons do NOT put lethality as their highst concern — they have to be light to carry, survive brutal conditions, be reliable, easy to service, cheap to produce and be relatively accurate.

If one wants to ban ‘assault rifles’ one would have to ban all semi automatic rifles. The only issue with this is handguns are also all pretty much universally semi automatic. Now, banning handguns (as much as I enjoy shooting them) is a reasonable position. The majority of gun crimes come from handguns. Banning handguns would save many many more lives than banning semi-automatic rifles. A handgun with many magazines could easily be as lethal an assault rifle in an in door environment. Then you have shotguns, which have extreme deadliness, but very legitimate hunting uses.

Again, I’m not trying to change anyones minds. I’ve merely seen too many people with huge misunderstandings about guns in the US. I imagine most people will probably want even STRICTER gun control after reading this and I’m okay with that. I just want them to be informed. This is just a very basic primer that might seem obvious, but many people I’ve talked too even thought you could purchase fully automatic weapons. So all I ask if that you have informed, awesome opinions as this is an important issue. If anyone has any questions, hit me up.

Anyways, here’s a little short guide to the above.

Assault Rifles sold to civilians are not meaningfully different from the vast majority of semiautomatic hunting rifles.

Assault Rifles are NOT deadlier. They shoot weaker rounds and shorter barrels than hunting rifles so they can be controllable with automatic fire. Civilian assault weapons DO NOT have automatic firing capabilities.

Military features of Assault rifles, for the purposes of domestic gun violence, are mostly superficial.

Even if they aren’t superficial, most proposed laws don’t BAN these features, they limit how many you can have.

Large capacity magazines can be used with ‘normal’ hunting rifles. That said, they’re probably the most meaningful thing you could restrict.

Rifles account for about 2% of gun crime. Handguns account for the majority of gun crime

Dark Souls 2 is announced and I’m obviously excited. I have the same concerns as everyone else. I’m a fan of Miyazaki, Shibuya’s comments about preferring “direct” over “subtle” concern me, but ultimately I’m positive. It takes a company and a complete culture to make a game like Dark Souls and I don’t think Shibuya, a former Monster Hunter guy, can ruin it. His strengths will be shared with the project. I’ve even heard that Miyazaki has said in a Japanese interview that he wouldn’t even want to direct another Souls game — not because he doesn’t want to do one, but because he wants to be freed of the ‘director’ responsibilities so he can get more down and dirty with design. The role of Supervisor is a vague one, so what he’ll actually be doing is anyone’s guess. Hopefully more rather than less.

Still, there was a line in the Edge Magazine teaser that bothered me. Some people even attributed this to From Soft due to shoddy writing on Edge Magazine’s part.

We sympathise if that sort of statement concerns you, but at the same time, we can surely agree that we would all like to see Dark Souls attain as great a presence as The Elder Scrolls. How it gets there is a worthy matter for debate, but it’s certainly a noble task.

No, we can’t all agree on this. Perhaps in a theoretical world where the Souls games could get to Elderscrolls level without compromise, sure, but we do not live in that world. The compromises needed to make a Souls game as popular as an Elderscrolls game would kill the essence of what makes it a Souls game. And on a financial side, if it tried to compete with that audience, could it even win, or would it instead kill the series? The strength of niches is the fanatic level of devotion fans have. You might not be able to support the most massive projects off a niche, but they can be safe and stable once you have a fanbase. Dark Souls proved From has access to quite a sizable niche and it makes sense to grow it more. Adding accessibility, even if it negatively effects me, is probably for the best as long as it done cautiously and tastefully. I don’t think people should have to look up what “poise” does or have to read that resistance is a dumb stat. I even think having a more direct, top layer narrative would be fine, as long as the subtle layers are just as deep. It could even be a tool to make players dig deeper. It’s easy to play Dark Souls and think there is no plot or lore to be found and that’s a shame. So you can make a friendlier and more accessible game and hopefully From will do it as tastefully as I hope they do it. I hope Dark Souls gets as popular as it can, without horribly compromising its self. But that basically assures it will never be as popular as something like Skyrim. Even if it could, that isn’t a ‘noble goal’. The “noble goal” would be not to compromise — to make one’s art with passion. To do what one things is best for the ‘game’ rather than maximizing profits. We can’t expect a company to do that, but putting forth the idea that cashing in a Brand Name to try to get Skyrim-Dollars is a ‘noble goal’ is absurd. For art, popularity and money is not a ‘noble goal’, it is a necessity and the means to an end.

Again, these are Edge’s words, not From’s. Regardless, they still make me cringe, even if I’m still expecting the best out of From Software.

Stats

Trevor vos Cruz is the eldest child of House Cruz. Trevor was considered an exceptionally gifted child, being gifted both physically and in his studies. Trevor quickly gained rank and prestige in his Order and is a renowned Slayer for the church.

Reserved and studious, Trevor spends the majority of his free time reading or training, often to the neglect of other responsibilities. While seen as somewhat cold to most, Trevor has a warm and talkative relationship with his sister Naomi. Seeing her potential, Trevor has personally seen to her training from a young age, while also trying to teach her topics like history and philosophy.

Due to the large targets Trevor tends to fight, he was gifted the greatsword, Verbanner, a giant slab of a sword, milled from a cold iron slab. While naturally a slow weapon, Trevor’s immense strength allows him to wield to wield it with surprising speed, making it an ideal weapon for taking out giant enemies. Trevor needs time to recover from swings, which is represented by his charge gauge, which by default is represented by a value between 0 and 100%. The higher this number is, the faster and more powerful Trevor’s next attack will be. This gauge will naturally fill to 50% and can be sped up and pushed to 100% by holding down the Attack button to charge. While charging, Trevor’s movement is temporarily slowed. By picking up Sword Power-Ups Trevor can charge up to 200% (and up to 150% without charging)!

While Trevor can’t maintain a fast pace while wielding his heavy sword, he has developed a number of techniques which focus on short bursts of rapid movement to compensate.

Dash

Command: (c) + Forward/Back

A rapid dash that can be canceled at any point by an attack or a jump. If done in the air, the dash will ignore gravity and allow Trevor to span long chasms. The dash also gradually increases Trevor’s charge gauge and can push it over it’s maximum limit.

Dodge

Command: (c) + No Directions

A stationary dodge. Trevor dodges to the side and becomes temporarily invulnerable. If an attack passes by him during this time, Trevor gains further invincibility and a large bonus to his charge game. While powerful, Dodge is quite expensive to use.

Combat Roll

Command: (c) + Down

A quick roll. While faster than a dash, it is more expensive and takes time to recover. It can be used to roll under enemies, which, like the Dodge, will power up your Charge meter. The Combat Roll must be spaced properly so you pass through the enemy completely.

Leap

Command: (c) + Up

A high, floaty jump that exceeds Trevor’s normal jump height. It allows for full freedom of movement in the air and can be canceled into an air attack at any time. It can be used to dodge attacks or reach hard to reach places, but grants on bonuses to your charge meter.